The Cyprus connection

It is important that Israel continue to develop strong ties with both Cyprus and Greece

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s historic trip Thursday to Cyprus – the first
by an Israeli prime minister – is being presented by many as a direct result of
Israel’s deteriorating relations with Turkey.

Seeking to avoid offending
Turkey – which invaded the northern half of Cyprus in 1974 and is hostile to the
Greek-allied south – Israel was traditionally wary of cultivating relations with
Nicosia. However, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic AKP party has
gradually but steadily moved away from Kemal Ataturk’s secularist policies and
Western orientation toward an alignment with Arab neighbors and the terrorist
organization Hamas, seemingly as part of an anachronistic obsession with
reinstating the old Ottoman Empire.

Israel, in response, began to
strengthen its relations with Cyprus and Greece and reconsider its position on
the Armenian and Kurdish national movements. This explanation is only partially
correct. While the deterioration of relations with Turkey was undoubtedly a
catalyst, warming relations with Cyprus are part of a larger reorientation of
Israeli foreign policy. Even before May 2010’s Mavi Marmara fiasco, Foreign
Minister Avigdor Liberman had launched a concerted effort to reengage with
numerous countries that had fallen out of close relations with
Jerusalem.

If since the 1993 Oslo Accords inordinate diplomatic effort
was concentrated on the Washington-Ramallah track, under Liberman the Foreign
Ministry began to focus more energies on cultivating closer ties with Balkan
countries such as Bulgaria, Bosnia and Greece – not principally as a
counter-weight to the weakening ties with Ankara, but as a wider change in
foreign policy strategy. More effort is also being made to strengthen
ties with Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, China and India.

Our
fast-developing relations with Cyprus are also fostered by mutual fossil energy
interests. The Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, the country’s national energy
company and two Israeli firms – Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration – hold
shares in Texas-based Noble Energy, an oil and gas exploration firm. Noble has
been leading exploration and exploitation of oil and gas reserves under the
Mediterranean Sea in areas delineated in a December 2010 agreement between
Jerusalem and Nicosia as part of the two countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones.
Tamar, the world’s largest gas find in 2009, and Leviathan, an even bigger gas
field, will supply all our domestic needs and provide significant export
revenues as well.

Further consolidating the ties between Cyprus and
Israel has been Turkish belligerence. Ankara, in the name of the
Turkish-occupied northern half of Cyprus, and Lebanon, backed by the Shi’ite
terrorist organization Hezbollah, have laid unjustified claims to the oil and
gas findings. On November 23, for instance, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz
claimed that Israeli and Cyprian gas and oil explorations in the eastern
Mediterranean were illegal and questioned the Exclusive Economic Zones
demarcated by the two countries. In September 2011, Erdogan said that Turkey
“will take appropriate steps” and “prevent unilateral exploitation by Israel of
natural resources of the eastern Mediterranean.”

In mid-September, Turkey
sent three naval ships to “protect” a Norwegian boat hired by the Turkish
government to conduct gas explorations in the territorial waters of the Republic
of Cyprus. And on December 21, 2011, Turkish warships demonstratively shelled
the strip of water dividing the Israeli Leviathan and Cyprian Bloc 12 gas
fields.

Israel and Cyprus cannot simply cave in to Turkish
bullying. Indeed, neither seems to be doing so. Cypriot President
Demetris Christofias said Thursday during a press conference with Netanyahu: “I
call upon the international community, and especially the European Union, to
send a strong message to Turkey that it must stop violating and start respecting
international law, especially if it looks forward to becoming a member of the
European family.”

And while Netanyahu was silent on Turkish aggression
during his Cyprus visit, Israel has deployed drones and unmanned marine
vehicles, equipped with night vision devices, radars and multiple launch
systems, to protect its drilling platforms. And the cancellation on December 22
of the $90 million sale to the Turkish Air Force of Elbit’s hi-tech surveillance
system was interpreted by some as timed to send a signal to Ankara to stop its
campaign of harassment in and around Israel’s gas fields.

Under the
circumstances it is important that Israel continue to develop strong ties with
both Cyprus and Greece. Netanyahu’s unprecedented visit to Cyprus is a
integral part of that endeavor.